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Friday, January 2, 2009

Autumn Just Around The Bend - First published Sept. 13, 2005 in Live Journal

I look up--autumn mixeswith Orion

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Here in the California high desert north of Palm Springs, autumn is definitely playing peek-a-boo, doing a slow strip-tease of the locust and poplar trees in our front yard, crisping the often groaning wind with currents from cooler climes, and darkening the light from summer white to October gold. August heat recedes at last. I welcome the dryer, thinner September air. People often say that California has no seasons. Perhaps the winters are not as pronounced, especially closer to the coast, but there is change. The mountains do get snow, and lots of it. And the coastal areas clog up with fog and cooler overcast days. It can even sometimes rain! But I live neither on the coast or in the mountains. I live in the desert, not the low desert but the high desert where there are tons of joshua trees and other lush vegetation (not just sand,) and where the stars are so bright and so close you should be able to pluck them raw right out of the sky. It can snow here. It definitely rains. But it is the wind that is special. It has personality, depth and history. It is definitely haunted. And it haunts me. It might bother some people to be haunted, but not me. I love the feeling of the unknown. It has a definite feeling, like nostalgia, or a thought that you might be coming close to something familiar that never quite manifests. It is like the scent of a birthday cake cooking, or the memory of your father's prickly beard, or soft cool grass on your bare feet, the things that take you immediately to the child within, the source. And it is also pumpkin eyes blinking, dark wonder, the thrill of being slightly lost. Autumn brings, on the edges of its cloak, these things and more. It is the season that reminds me I really know so very very little. About anything. At all. And because of that, EVERY door opens. And I blissfully stand before all possibilities.